by Cora Brent
That was the morning I learned that grief had a sound. It sounded like my father’s wail as he sank to his knees right there at the door.
The second time I saw my father cry was the night he burst into the emergency room of the county hospital, where I’d been taken after my car accident. I was busy being pissed off at myself for climbing in Becker Purdy’s car when I knew he’d been drinking. I was also plenty scared because I could tell my knee was all fucked up and I needed that knee to claim my scholarship at Michigan State.
But relief had a sound too. It was the words, “Thank god,” whispered over and over as my father clutched me in his strong arms and sobbed with thanks that life hadn’t been so cruel as to steal a second son from him.
I couldn’t remember ever discussing Caden’s death with my dad. In my memory there was was only the stark shock of the tragedy and then the years of private grief. Emotions were not discussed. They were buried.
“You look good, Bran,” Nell said cheerfully as she stood beside my father’s chair. “I guess Arizona’s treating you well?”
“Arizona?” My dad peered at me and blinked. “What happened to the Army?”
“My time was up, Dad,” I said. “I chose not to re-enlist and was honorably discharged.”
“I told you that, honey,” Nell said with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Bran’s working and going to school. You’re studying geography, right?”
“Geology,” I said.
My father was frowning. “If I’d known you were getting out of the Army I would have held off on selling the dealership.”
It seemed futile to mention that the dealership had been floundering for years, that I never had any intention of returning to Hickeyville to work there anyway. Or that he was well aware of all this and we’d argued about it many times before.
Fortunately a guy in a white coat walked in, introduced himself to me as the surgeon who’d operated on my dad’s leg and proceeded to go over a list of instructions. I looked away when he examined the surgical site.
Less than ten minutes later I was wheeling my dad out of the hospital and to Nell’s waiting car. Nell asked if I’d mind driving since she wanted to sit in the back with my dad.
The fifty miles to Hickeyville was passed in silence that was occasionally broken when Nell asked a friendly question. How did I like school? How did I like the southwest? How was my job going?
I answered as completely as I could without bringing up Cecily. I hadn’t mentioned her name in years, not to them. It would have been tough to explain that she was what had drawn me to Arizona, especially when she obviously didn’t want me there. I kept hearing the furious words Cecily had shrieked at me the last time we were face to face. I heard Cecily’s best friend telling me how she’d cried for months after she left me.
In the end, I couldn’t necessarily charm my way back into her life and time didn’t inevitably heal wounds. That didn’t mean I was giving up. I just didn’t want to spill my guts while driving my stepmother’s car.
“I forgot how colorful it is here in the fall,” I remarked as we got closer to town. Brilliant shades of orange and red tinted the tall trees that lined both sides of the road.
Autumn here meant football and bonfires and cool night air. It meant kissing a girl beside the reservoir and being awed by the sight of her soft skin in the moonlight. It meant asking for the world and promising the impossible and knowing even then that the way I felt about this one incomparable girl was a gift that came around only once. In spite of all the places I’d been and all the things I’d seen since then, nothing had changed my mind about that.
“I’m sure you’ve got plenty of pretty scenery in Arizona,” said Nell lightly and I couldn’t argue with her there. But the muted colors of the desert were different, more subdued.
Then I stopped thinking about trees and scenery and kissing Cecily Barnett under a chilly night sky because we were turning into Hickeyville.
Here was the corner where my father’s car dealership had existed for decades and was in the process of being turned into a lumber warehouse. There was Center Street, once the local main drag, and now an avenue of boarded windows and a few stubborn establishments that lingered on. A half mile to the west would be the old high school, now empty. The football field would be choked with weeds. And finally, just north of town was the ghost of the old factory. Razed after the disastrous fire and reduced to a mere concrete footprint, its absence was almost palpable.
The house I’d spent my first eighteen years in was largely unchanged. My eyes drifted over to the closed door of the apartment atop the garage but I wouldn’t go in there, not today.
My father waved me off when I tried to assist him into the house, instead using his crutches. Nell fluttered around both of us like a hummingbird and headed for the kitchen as soon as my dad was comfortable on the couch.
His face was flushed from exertion after grunting his way indoors using the crutches but he fastened his eyes on me and gestured to the armchair.
“Have a seat,” he said.
“You need something, Eric?” Nell called from the kitchen.
“No, honey,” my dad called back, still watching me. “I’m fine. Just talking to Bran.”
“Don’t be mad at her,” I said quietly when the busy sounds from the kitchen resumed. “She didn’t tell me to come.”
My father’s brow furrowed. “You think I’m unhappy to see you, Branson?”
I shifted in the chair. “I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you, Dad. Look, I don’t expect anything. I just wanted to let you know that I care, that I’ll be on the next plane anytime you need me.”
His face softened and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he looked at me directly. “I deeply regret our fight.”
“So do I.” I hesitated, wondering if I ought to mention something. “I called Mom. I told her you’d been in the hospital. She was sorry to hear it.”
He nodded. “I know. She called the room yesterday. Nell talked to her for a while and then we had a few words.”
I felt my eyebrows shoot up. My parents hadn’t spoken in years. “And how’d that go?”
He smiled. “It went fine. She seems happy.” He stared at me thoughtfully. “Why did you really choose to move to Arizona, Bran?”
I shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any.”
He was silent, his right hand absently massaging his leg as a grimace crossed his face. I’d heard of phantom limbs, how amputees could feel tingling and even pain. I wondered if the phenomenon was related to the ache in the heart after losing someone you love.
“Cecily’s there,” I said and he didn’t look shocked.
“You’re with Cecily?” he asked.
I hesitated. “Not yet.”
“What does that mean?”
I stared down at my hands. “Just what I said.”
“You still love her,” he said and it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t something I could convincingly deny either so I nodded.
My father suddenly grabbed his crutches and got to his feet. I immediately stood to help him but he ignored me and hobbled over to the big bay window in the living room. The house sat on a small incline and we’d always had a good view of the town from here. My father squinted out the window for a moment, then he turned to me and smiled.
“You understand now, Branson,” he said. “Sometimes you lose people and it seems like in your agony you’ll lose yourself. But you can’t do that because you have to fight the battles you still have a chance of winning. And you need to try. You need to try even when the effort hurts.”
I leaned forward and stared down at the floor. “I wasn’t able to hold on to Cecily. I always loved her but I didn’t treat her the way she deserved.”
He shook his head, almost impatiently. “But now you’re trying to fix that. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Keep trying,” he said earnestly. “If she’s worth it, then keep trying. Even if you know yo
u might still lose.”
I felt choked up all of a sudden, thinking that I’d misunderstood him for so many years. All along I figured he was desperately trying to cling to a lost family and a dying town, not caring if he ruined himself in the process. But that wasn’t it. In my father’s own way he was unable to let go of hope. I sure as hell couldn’t condemn him for that.
“I’ve missed you, Dad.”
He grinned. “Missed you too, son.”
Nell called us to the table for dinner a short time later. After checking my father’s blood sugar monitor she lovingly served him a specially prepared healthy dinner, then sat down and immediately started doing most of the talking. I wasn’t complaining though. Nell brought a happy energy into any room and we were lucky to have her.
Anyway, Nell had some interesting local news. She was partnering with an old friend to open a thrift store in town. It seemed there’d been a slight reversal of fortunes in the last year, resulting in an uptick of Hickeyville’s population. Ten miles away a steel pipe factory had opened. There was also a brand new medical center five miles in the other direction. There wasn’t exactly an overnight renaissance but after so much bad news in the area for so long it was good to hear something positive.
When she casually mentioned that her daughter – now married and expecting a baby in the early spring – was living only a mile away I politely acknowledged and then changed the subject.
My father got tired early and accepted my help to get to his room. The plan was to install a permanent chair lift. Nell told me the installer would be here tomorrow.
Once my dad was safely in his bedroom under Nell’s care I wandered down the hall. The last door on the left was my old room. Nell had warned me I’d find the bed bare but she said there were clean sheets in the hall closet. I took the sheets but didn’t go straight to my room.
Instead I opened the door to the bedroom across the hall. Most of the boyish things that once crowded this room were long gone, having been boxed up years ago. The room was mostly empty except for an exercise bike in the corner. But the walls were still painted midnight blue and when I looked around I could almost hear Caden’s laughter, followed by an order that I stop snooping in his room and touching his shit.
As I closed the door I wondered about something that had occurred to me a million times. I wondered who my brother would have been if he’d lived.
“Miss you, big brother,” I whispered on the other side of the door.
It was still early but I was tired so I retreated to my original bedroom, made up my old bed and got ready to turn in for the night. My mind should have been racing with memories and the whispers of ghosts but I feel asleep quickly and didn’t awaken until morning.
Two seconds after I opened my eyes I could hear Nell humming down in the kitchen. After throwing on the same clothes I wore yesterday I walked down the hall and poked my head in the doorway of the master bedroom. My father appeared to be sleeping comfortably.
Down in the kitchen Nell offered me a mug of coffee and I drained it in about ten seconds flat.
“How is he?” I asked as I rinsed the mug out in the sink.
Nell turned from the stove. Her usual heavy mask of makeup was missing this morning and I could see the shadows under her eyes.
“He had some pain last night,” she admitted and I could tell that it upset her to see my father hurting. “I need to wake him up soon to give him his meds.”
I waited a moment before saying anything. “Thank you, Nell.”
She cocked her head. “For what, Bran?”
“For being good to him.”
Her eyes were gentle. “There’s not a reason in the world to thank me for that. We all try to do the best we can for the people we love.”
She was right. We all try. But sometimes we still end up doing the wrong thing. And then it can be impossible to undo.
“Think I’ll take a walk,” I said, reaching for the screen door.
“You might want to throw a sweatshirt on,” Nell said. “It’s chilly this morning.”
“I’m not going far,” I insisted and headed outside.
The autumn sunshine was muted, not like the overpowering glare of Arizona. I meant it when I told Nell I wasn’t going far. I headed right for the detached garage and paused at the bottom of the narrow staircase that led to the upstairs apartment.
The steps groaned under my weight and I wondered how long it had been since anyone climbed them. My old key still fit and I slowly opened the door to the only place I had ever lived in with Cecily.
Most of the furniture was gone, not that there had been much to begin with. The area was now being used as a storage space for things that couldn’t be parted with but didn’t have a place in everyday life anymore. I poked around in some of the scattered boxes and found my old sports trophies, my parents’ wedding album, my childhood rock collection, all of Caden’s comic books.
These I lingered over for a little while, removing a stack from the box and looking at the covers of Spider Man and The Avengers and Captain America. Caden’s comics were his treasures and even though he indulged his little brother in some things, I wasn’t allowed to touch them. I pictured him sprawled on one of the backyard lounge chairs with a piece of black licorice in his mouth as he pored over his latest acquisition. Maybe it would have been this one about The Green Lantern.
That was before he started getting depressed, before he started drinking so hard he couldn’t remember the next day where he’d been and what he’d been doing, even as he laughed over everyone’s wild accounts of his behavior.
No, the version of Caden I was remembering was perhaps only twelve or thirteen and he might have looked up to see his kid brother watching him. He might have pointed that piece of licorice in my direction like a whip, grinned and hopped off the lounge chair, saying, “Hey, Bran the Man, how about we go toss the football around?”
I set the comic books back in the box and made a mental note to do something about them. Caden wouldn’t want them sitting unappreciated in a place hardly anyone could bear to enter. They deserved better than that.
With a sigh I rose and when I took a step I managed to accidentally knock over a different box. A pink stuffed bear and a scuffed pair of kids’ ballet shoes rolled out. I was confused for a second, wondering who in the hell these things could belong to. Then a shadow darkened the doorway and I remembered even before I looked up. I wasn’t even slightly surprised to see her standing there.
“Hey there,” she greeted me.
She was still pretty, although now it was a tired kind of pretty, not a haughty certainty that she was the hottest thing in the county. She tucked her hair behind her ears, shifting her weight, like she was nervous. She wouldn’t quite look me in the eye. “I just drove up a minute ago but I saw the door open.” She paused. “I wondered if it was you up here.”
“It is me,” I said.
She looked around and then offered me a tentative smile. “Hi, Bran.”
I couldn’t quite manage to smile back. “Hi, Kayla.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Branson
Cecily and I were married for about two months when she told me her period was eight days late. My mind immediately started racing in panic mode but I didn’t let her know. I just drove to the drug store, selected a pregnancy test and kept my head down as I walked past the row of diapers and other baby shit while I silently cursed myself for being a careless idiot.
A few of my buddies had found themselves in that situation so I knew it meant diapers and baby vomit and medical bills and exhaustion and no money. It meant we’d remain right here without means to go anywhere or do anything but what we were doing. I’d stay on at my dad’s dealership, probably taking a second job, while Cess would keep working shifts at Berto’s and we’d scrape by if we were lucky.
“Is that a line?” Cecily asked me an hour later as we stared at the test strip.
I studied it. “I don’t know. It might be nothing.”
“But it might be a line,” she said, peering at it closely. “That would mean it’s positive.”
“It might be a shadow.” I tried to keep the hope out of my voice.
Cecily’s eyes were wide as she looked at me. “Should I take another one?”
“Why don’t you wait until tomorrow?”
She sighed. “I didn’t plan this.”
I put my arm around her and curled her close to my body, kissing the top of her head. “Of course you didn’t. Neither one of us did.”
When I woke up the next morning Cecily was outside on the stairs even though it was freezing. “I got my period this morning,” she said when she heard the door open. She didn’t turn around.
I tried not to grin with relief but it was hard. I knew damn well we weren’t ready for a kid. “Come inside, babe. It’s cold.”
She sighed and trudged back up. I reached for her and as she tipped her face up to see me I was uneasy when I realized that I couldn’t read the look in her eyes.
“You should go to the store later,” she said. “You should buy every damn box of condoms on the shelf.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, still unsure how to read her mood, whether she was sad or relieved that parenthood wasn’t imminent. But it seemed she didn’t want to talk about it anymore so we didn’t.
The holidays brought snow and ice and a lot of distractions. Cecily’s friend Antha was home for winter break and they hung out every day. Antha was shy around me but she was always polite and I couldn’t deny that Cecily had brightened considerably the moment her best friend returned. I also had friends who had left for college and were home for a few weeks. For a little while there was always a party going on. Unfortunately, Cecily didn’t much like hanging around my old crowd and I didn’t like feeling as if I was dragging her around.
“They’re just friends from school,” I grumbled as I pulled on a pair of jeans and tried to talk her into coming out with me.
She sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her arms. “Your friends.”